1. Field
The present embodiments relate generally to systems and methods for shopping, and more specifically to systems and methods for evaluating the impact of proposed food purchases on a pre-planned diet.
2. Background
People have good intentions when it comes to setting goals related to their health and personal well being. Each new year we set New Year's resolutions to lose weight, eat healthier, exercise more, or other equally well-intentioned goals. More often than not these goals for the new year soon fall by the wayside as lost causes, only to be taken up again the following year. Many systems and methods have been devised in an effort to improve the chances of achieving one's goals, especially diet-related goals.
Published U.S. Patent Application 2005/0049920 to Day et al. describes a system for tracking the nutritional content of food purchases. Day et al's system monitors purchases a consumer is contemplating and suggests an alternative purchase which is appropriate to the consumer's diet. U.S. Pat. No. 5,836,312, issued to Moore discusses a system of dieting which takes into account the physiological parameters of a person, for example, age, height, weight and build of the person. Records are kept to account for food consumed by the dieter. If necessary, the system suggests changes to the person's diet after considering the caloric intake and physiological parameters of the person. Another conventional system described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,249,773 entails the creation of supermarket shopping lists based on the shopping history of a particular shopper. Similarly, the convention system of Canadian CA 1996002193869 creates a shopping list based on properties of the shopper or the shopper's family, the previous purchase history and household size.
One problem with these conventional systems is that they do not take into account the effect of the interaction between the present diet food items with an item substituted by the dieter.